


Drowning

by Anonymous



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Spoilers, Angst, F/M, I'm not sorry, Season 7 Episode 2, pure angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24556711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: What Melinda was going through in her head during the really sad scene between her and LMD Coulson in S7 ep2.Very angsty! But a good read (I think)!
Relationships: Life Model Decoy Phil Coulson/Melinda May, Phil Coulson/Melinda May
Comments: 17
Kudos: 50
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bad_ash10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bad_ash10/gifts).



> So- Angst. Lots of it. Go scream at me on my tumblr if you want!
> 
> Gifted to Bad_Ash10, who was also freaking out during these scenes, and is also super supportive in the comments! (: I hope May heals before the end of the season or I will hunt down some producers.

Melinda was drowning.

Hands tugged at her skin and her clothes, begging for something. Something she had, but she didn’t know what. She would give it, she would, to make it stop. Her body? Have it, she was dead already. 

Nails raked across her skin and left oozing lines in their wake as the things began to pull Melinda under.

She didn’t fight. Even in the clouded pain she could feel surrounding her, all she wanted to do was succumb to these things that were suffocating her. 

The sensation of a tugging in her gut made her arch up away from the creatures pulling at Melinda. As they got deeper and deeper, dragging her body, the tugging grew stronger, as if she was leaving something behind. It got stronger.

Black started to seep in at the edges of her eyes as the tugging turned into tension and then into pain. She started to scream, but no sound came out, just a warbled echo of a woman long gone. The pain spread, pulling at every molecule in her body and-

And something just tore inside of her, two halves forming. One of them continued to be dragged below and one, though heavy, floated up.

And she was awake.

Melinda gave a hoarse shout as she woke up, panting, remembering oh so clearly the pain in her stomach. She lifted up her shirt to reveal smooth, unblemished skin, void of any scars at all. Somewhere in the back of her mind she could remember having something there, something through her-

Sarge.

The name along with an onslaught of memories came clearly enough. Melinda finally caught her breath enough to look around. She was on a cot with a large glass pane circled over it. The capsule was in a lab, one with a SHIELD logo plastered on the walls.

She slipped out of the bed, groaning a little at the wrongness settling in her stomach, coiling up with so much tension.

Melinda wondered briefly if she was still dead, but everything felt real; just cold and numb and fuzzy around the edges. She didn’t stop to think how it could be possible.

As she surveyed the room around her, her fingers itched to do something; anything. To move and expend the energy threatening to burst out of her.

Finding the nearest door frame, she pulled herself up, and down, and up, and down. Soon she began a steady rhythm; the exertion and work used to pull up each time distracting her from whatever was attempting to inhabit her body.

After counting forty-two pull ups, somebody’s voice floated somewhere behind her, in another room. She could catch what sounded like a man saying, “There’s… we may need… deal… Agent May…”

Hearing him say Agent May, she kept her steady rhythm while thoughts turmoiled in her head. Was the person SHIELD? Or HYDRA? Most people didn’t use her title. It wasn’t her team; they never called her Agent May these days.

The man entered the room behind her; one pair of footsteps not bothering to be quiet. “She’s up, and quite active,” he noted. He must’ve been speaking into a comms device because she couldn’t sense anybody else around, even in her addled state. She continued pulling herself up on shaky arms, not even noticing the burn anymore. A bead of sweat trickled down her chin as the man continued, “I will do my best,” he grew closer, “but she does not seem to be in the mood to take orders.” he finished.

Take orders? From who? Mack?

She pulled up again, shuddering at the effort.

“Agent May, you should be getting some rest,” he informed her as she gritted her teeth and lowered herself down, then dropped to the ground in an automatic defensive stance, slightly dizzy but hiding it well. All of her nerves were both on edge and muted all at once. 

“I’ll rest when I’m dead,” she replied, her own voice sounding unfamiliar and strange fitting in her mouth.

“That’s what we were hoping,” he responded as she turned around. She knew who this was: Enoch, the damned robot that sent them to the future and helped Fitz. He approached her in a non threatening manner, but one of his hands was obviously behind his back, even though he seemed to be trying to hide it poorly.

She thought that maybe she was supposed to scoff, as it felt appropriate given his incompetence in concealing whatever he was holding, but she felt no urge to do so.

She didn’t feel an urge to do anything. It was like a wall, numbing her from any emotion threatening to overwhelm her. She got the feeling her mind wouldn’t be able to take it if the wall disappeared.

“I know you,” she said, approaching him slightly.

“I am Enoch, a sentient chronicom and the best friend of Leopold Fitz. You and I have not met in this timeline,” he closed the gap between them with an impassive expression, “but I was told we were quite helpful to each other in the previous one, as I hope we will be here.”

He retrieved what he’d been holding behind his back and displayed it to her. A syringe. “Dr. Simmons has prescribed a sedative that-”

Before he could finish his sentence, she grabbed his wrist and jammed the sedative into his shoulder. He turned to look at it, his facial expression not changing. “ _Ouch_.”

“Where is she? Where is everyone?” 

“They are all on mission.”  _ Without her? _ She didn’t understand.

Melinda cocked her head slightly. “Why am I still here?”

Without answering her question, Enoch asked, “What exactly do you remember?”

She took a second to pull at memories touching the fuzzy areas of her thoughts and blinked, trying to clear the storm clouds threatening to break in her mind. “I fought through the spirit world, killed Izel, and then woke up in that thing.”

“That is correct,” Enoch appeared a bit stupefied.

_ Why wouldn’t it be correct? _

“But you also died,” he told her. “Momentarily. Dr. Simmons was able to save you using technology she had a considerable time to develop.”

“How much time?”

“A considerable amount.”

She stared at him. The tugging in her gut appeared again, this time seeming to be saying, ‘this should be news. This is a lot. You’ve gone through a lot.’ But she just didn’t care. What reason was there for her to care?

She cared about food. 

“I’m  hungry,” she announced, and brushed past Enoch to find a goddamn bagel.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the scene with LMD Coulson. <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cried. More than once. Not ashamed.

Hit.

She needed to protect the team.

Hit.

Enoch was in her way.

Hit.

The tugging appeared once again, this time a little stronger, saying that she must feel remorse for this, he’s only trying to help-

Hit.

He was simply an obstacle in the way of her objective.

Hit.

And she needed to- 

“May!”

Melinda paused mid-swing, blank.

The tugging turned into pulling, as if it were reminding her of something. But what?

She turned around slowly, the fire hydrant still in her hand. An older-fashioned car pulled up the cargo ramp into the Zephyr, and the team piled out. She vaguely took in their period-relevant clothes, then their faces, all a little apprehensive. She lowered the hydrant but still kept a firm grip on the top.

And Phil. Phil was walking up the ramp to her. The tugging returned, full force, telling her mixed things like she should smile because she used to love him in a bowtie, or that she should be wary because her Phil is dead. She should be feeling  _ something _ !

But again she hit a mental wall and simply stared at him. She cocked her head as he approached. “You’re not Sarge,” she observed. The tugging started to hurt, yelling at her to feel something, to do  _ something, _ to be mad, scared, or outraged.

“No, I’m not.”

She stared at him longer. “You’re not Coulson either.”

_ PHIL.  _ HE’S NOT _ PHIL _ , her gut screamed. She couldn’t understand what it meant.

“Well, yes and no.”

She waited for him to continue. He studied her impassive face. “Aren’t you at all surprised? I mean, I was dead.”

_ And? _

She realized that the tugging was leading her in a direction. His direction. It was asking her to move towards him and feel something. She refused it. Not following the pulling in her gut started a hard tension that ran up and sown her body making her tense- and then it hit her wall; her metal wall. And it _snapped_.

She  _ felt something _ .  _ Love _ , mixed with  _ anger _ . So, so little of it but enough that it scared her. The sudden burst of emotion filling up her mind, making the cold disappear…

The emotions tried to spill out, to make her say something, but her body remained frozen, her eyes dark and icy. It hurt, and her entire body burned as she was trapped in the darkness of her own mind.

She had to get away from Him. He was breaking her wall, and it was causing her pain. She had to say something that would get Him off her back; make Him not talk to her, to get away.

“You still are.” 

Her voice still sounded alien to her ears as she walked away, collapsing and clawing at the walls while her body moved away, stony.

Melinda was drowning.

**Author's Note:**

> Still not sorry! <3


End file.
